John Anthony's Blog

Waiting for the luge competition...

by John Anthony,posted Feb 13 2010 7:49AM

So I'm going to be super lazy today and just hang out waiting to watch the luge competition (the highlight of the Winter Olympics in my mind).
It turns out the event won't be postponed. Two changes have been made after yesterday's accident: the wall has been raised a bit where the accident happened and something is being changed with the ice. They won't say exactly what, but chances are the temperature is being raised a bit so the sleds don't go as fast.
The Olympic officials have decided the accident was rider error and the track is not unsafe. I'm kind of surprised at that and so are others. I'm happy I'm not alone - here's an article from Olympic Fanhouse which shares my views.
And here's the NBC news article on the results of the investigation along with some video...

It seems they're trying to now push the sport beyond the limits of what's safe, just to make the Olympics more extreme and exciting to watch. Unfortunately, when you have a person on a sled going down a track of ice with only a helmet as protection, I think there's a definite point where you just can't go any faster or get more intense without the sport becoming completely unsafe.
Maybe 65 - 75 mph is the limit and shouldn't be exceeded. Nodar's sled was going 88 - 89 mph at the time of the crash. And that's just the way the track is - a lot more extreme than others. And the ice was probably at a colder temperature yesterday, making the sled go even faster than normal.
We'll see what happens later today. If I'm reading the schedule right, the first official run for luge will be at 8:00pm EST tonight.